The Safety and Licensing Committee met 05/28/2025. The action item they spent the most time discussing was the request from Wisconsin United Football Club to approve the special event application for their Summer Shootout soccer tournament scheduled to take place 06/20/2025-06/22/2025. The application was automatically denied because it was submitted 39 days before the event, but the city’s new Special Events Policy requires applications to be submitted at least 45 days prior to an event.
The Summer Shootout event has been held annually for over 30 years and brings a lot of outside visitors to area hotels. The event organizers had only learned they needed to submit a special events application on April 11, less than a month before it was due, and although they made a good faith effort to complete and submit it, they were late in getting it in. In spite of that, city staff were prepared to provide services for the event. In light of the newness of the Special Events Policy, the good faith effort of the organizers, and the willingness of staff to provide support for the event, the committee voted unanimously to recommend that the denial be overturned and the special events application be approved.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The organizers of the event attended the meeting and explained the importance and value of the event as well as the economic benefit of allowing it to go forward. The Summer Shootout has taken place annually for over 30 years and draws in teams from Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Canada. Some families book their hotels as early as January before registration even opens and, per Ann Bona, one of the organizers, many local hotels have sold out of their rooms.
Ms. Bona highlighted the a soccer club from Minnesota which attends every year. The entire club has more than 25 teams and they all stay at the Paper Valley Hotel occupying roughly 275 of the 288 rooms in the Paper Valley for two nights ever year. Not allowing the tournament to go forward would cause serious financial consequences to the tourism industry in Appleton.
Beyond the impact on tourism, the tournament also raised over $80,000 in donations to cancer-related charities.
Eric Gebhard the president of USA Sports Park where the tournament is held explained to the committee that they were contacted about submitting a special event permit on April 11. The deadline to submit it was May 6. When they started going through the application they found it had a lot of questions about things that were important but that they had never considered in the past such as where their mass casualty collection area would be and things related to reducing the possibility of an automobile assault being able to be successfully carried out. They found all of that beneficial, but it also required dialoging with the city as they completed the application and the process took longer than the May 6 deadline.
He noted that they were a completed self-funded organization and without events like this they could not pay their bills and cover the cost of needed maintenance and improvements such as upgrading sprinkler system, improving the lighting, and redoing the bathrooms. He mentioned the need for a $500,000 parking lot repair.
He also noted that the Youth Sports facility was used for more than just soccer and hosted little league baseball, numerous community events, and CDL truck driving training.
Clerk Kami Lynch told the committee that the new Special Events Policy went into effect at the beginning of this year. This situation was somewhat unique because the city had been providing support to this event for several years. It sounded like this was the first year that the organizers even needed to get a special event permit. Per Clerk Lynch, “we tried to work with the event organizers to communicate that to them; however, you know, it wasn’t done perhaps as soon as both of us would have liked, and these applicants took the, I would say, expanded application with our new permitting requirements quite seriously. So, it took a little more time to complete, but with knowing that this isn’t a brand-new event, they have already reduced the size of their event to take into consideration the surrounding construction, and city staff are prepared to support the event even though there is a late application.”
The committee confirmed that the application denial had been automatic because they missed the deadline and not because city staff were not willing or able to provide support to the event. Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) pointed out that the 45 day application deadline was in place to make sure staff had enough time to review the application to ensure that they could provide proper support, but, in this case, staff already knew about the event and knew they could provide support. In fact, the Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation was a board member of one of the organizations putting on the event.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) said, “When we passed this change to our special events policy, we talked about there being an adjustment period, and city staff told us that they would work with people who had had previous events with us, and appreciate that you took this application seriously, and for, you know, understood the need for some of these kind of scary questions when we’re talking about a really, really large event like this. So, appreciate everything you do for the city. I know it brings a huge crowd, and we’re all excited about that, and thank you for your diligence in completing all the steps.”
The committee went on to vote 3-0 to recommend the special event permit be issued.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1281686&GUID=6DBFE569-09BE-4D70-8984-9D594C9B3E17
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